英语民间故事：The Rabbit Steals the Elephants Dinner_英美文化

英语民间故事：The Rabbit Steals the Elephants Dinner

Kalulu the rabbit was one day watching the children of Soko the monkey playing in the trees, and saw one monkey reach out his tail and catch his brother round the neck, holding him a helpless prisoner in mid-air.

Kalulu thought that this was splendid, and though he had no long tail, he could twist forest creepers into a noose1. During the next few days numbers of animals were caught in this way and held fast in the forest thickets2, only escaping with difficulty. They thought that it was only an accident, but had they known, it was Kalulu who was experimenting with his noose.

At last Polo the elephant decided3 to make a new village, and, being king of the animals, he called every living thing in the forest to come and help him build it.

All came with the exception of Kalulu. He had caught a whiff from the delicious beans which Polo's wives were cooking for his dinner, and when the beans were cold Kalulu came out of the bushes and ate them up.

Polo was furious when he reached home and found that his beans had been stolen. Whoever could have taken his dinner?

Next day he told the lion to lie in wait nearby, and to pounce4 upon the thief if one appeared. Now Kalulu was hiding in the bushes and heard the plan, so he spent that night in twisting a big noose, which he set in a side path close to the cooking pots.

Next morning, when the animals had gone to work on the new village, Kalulu strolled out into the open and began to eat Polo's beans, with one eye on the place where he knew that the lion was hiding. Having finished his meal Kalulu ran off, when, as he expected, Ntambo the lion leapt out in pursuit. Kalulu bolted through the noose that he had set, and when Ntambo followed he was caught and swung into mid-air, where he wriggled5 and squirmed till evening, when the animals returned to the village and set him loose. Ntambo was too ashamed to saythat he had been fooled by a little rabbit, so simply said that some unknown animal had ensnared him.